I think it's time for me to take a break. I have been doing the same tour/show for the last five (or is it six?) years and I have reached my limit - for now. For the past 2,190 odd days, I have been wearing the same hat, plodding through the same boustrophedon, and mouthing off the same script, rain or shine. But don't get me wrong, it's not that my job has become stressful - I still believe I have the best job in the Philippines. It's just it has gotten a little, well, repetitious lately and needs to refresh itself. The tour has become so rote that I don't even hear myself speaking anymore. I assume this is how Lea Salonga must've felt after playing the lead in Miss Saigon for what - two thousand times or something? I'm sure she reached a point where upon uttering the opening lyrics, "I'm seventeen and I'm new here today", all she wanted to do was get postal. And who can blame her? After playing Kim for all that time, she definitely wasn't seventeen, and she was definitely not new there that day.And just a couple of days ago, as I was being interviewed by the wonderful Tanya Lara about a tour I'll be doing in Fort Bonifacio on April 25, she asked if there was any interesting book or movie that I finished lately. And Good Lord. I went blank. I realized that I haven't taken the time out to read or watch films in hella long time. I haven't had fresh brain input in years! Which is why I'm rather glad to announce that I'll be taking some time off from all tours in May. I'll be off to Toronto and Vancouver to hang out with Fil-Canadian artists, to get back in touch with my visual artist roots, and to wander about a functional first world metropolis. I also indefinitely cancelled all Corregidor tours and Chinatown tours, and am cleaning out/evicting all extraneous stress/projects/people from my life. Oh, and I will also read.
Purchased from the bookstore that we know as National: Militant But Groovy: Stories of Samahang Demokratiko ng Kabataan; Huling Pytyk: The Art of Nonoy Marcelo (my former boss at Samahang Kartunista ng Pilipinas); Chaka Chronicles (a graphic novel about a fat girl who eats pizza) by Bobbi Jolbitado, and The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century by Thomas Friedman.
